


meant for the fires

by stereosymbiosis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, F/F, Underworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1694690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereosymbiosis/pseuds/stereosymbiosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanaya dies, and the Queen of the underworld gives her a decision to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	meant for the fires

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the following [hswc prompt](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/18819.html?thread=3469955#cmt3469955): Remember when it turned out that Rose was Hades and Kanaya was Persephone and it all worked out in the end?
> 
> Rather loosely based on Greek mythology. I just kind of went with it.

You open your eyes to complete darkness. The air is clammy and moist, heavy with a musty smell you can’t quite place. Damp soil lodges itself under your fingernails as you push yourself up from the ground. You can hear the slosh of water in the distance, the soft slapping of waves against a rocky shore. You have no idea where you are, and no idea how you got to wherever you are now. The last thing you remember before waking up in the darkness is strifing with Eridan, but how that led to your current location is beyond your comprehension.

Something near you starts to glow, faintly at first, pulsating brighter and brighter until you can see the high cave walls that surround you on three sides, and the glistening of the underground lake just barely within sight. You start walking toward the water and the light follows you, and only when you look around in search of the source do you realize that the light is emanating from underneath your skin. That’s new. There’s a faint glow underneath the dark fabric of your sleeves, but your uncovered hands are a brilliant, gleaming white. You suppose suddenly having skin that glows in the dark is at least helpful in this situation, if also generally worrisome.

You walk slowly toward the water, holding your hands out in front of you to light the way. The sound of rocks crunching under your heels echoes around the cave with every careful step you take. When you reach the water, you realize it’s not a lake, but a river. A wooden boat is tied to a post at the river bank, empty but for a single occupant. He stands when you walk near, and the decrepit hood of his cloak slides off, revealing his reddened eyes, deep-set and fiery like a furnace. He has a look about him like he is suffering from a grave illness, with sallow skin stretched over his cheeks and a frailty in the bony fingers wrapped around his wooden oar, but he walks and moves with great confidence and steadiness.

“Kanaya Maryam,” the man in the boat says, but when you edge closer his brows furrow at the sight of you, as if you were not what he was expecting. “You...do not belong here.”

“Where is here, exactly?” you ask, but the man is too transfixed by your appearance to respond. You self-consciously pull your sleeves down as far as they will stretch over your hands, but that does nothing to dim the light radiating from your arms, and you don’t even want to think about what kind of glow your face is giving off right now.

You take another step toward the boat, and the man shakes himself out of his reverie. “I’ll need fare for the ferry, if you want to cross,” he says, holding his cupped palm toward you. You spare a glance to the left and right, but there is no pathway of any sort except for the one you had already come down. The only way to go is across the river. You fumble in your sash to find some sort of fare, but you know you have nothing with you. The man raises his eyebrows expectantly, gesturing forward with his empty palm, and an idea occurs to you.

“Will you take this?” You remove one of your earrings, a gold disc about the size of the buttons on your skirt. It dangles between your fingertips, and the man snatches it from your grasp before you even realize that he’s moved. He leers at its twin, still hanging in your ear, but you remove it and carefully place it in your sash. Something tells you that you’ll be needing fare for another boat ride somewhere down the line.

He beckons you onto the boat and you step in carefully, sitting on the narrow seat. The man pushes off from the shore with his oar, and the boat creaks into the water.

“What is on the other side?” you ask. You look up at him, but he is focused on pushing the oar through the water. The boat moves slowly, but steadily, and you shiver as a breeze over the water chills you to the bone.

“The queen,” the ferryman says, his last words before becoming silent. He continues to ferry you across, his thin arms and fragile wrists manipulating the oar through the water with a strength you would not anticipate. The only sound is the soft splash of the oar as it passes through the still water. It is not until you’ve reached the rocky shore and exited the boat that you realize you might be dead.

There is a well-used pathway in the dirt here, leading forward into the darkness. As you follow it, you can see flickering flames in the distance. The cave widens, and a woman in a gold cloak walks out of the shadows. She is radiant, but not literally, as you are -- it’s more like you can feel her glow instead of see it.

“Kanaya Maryam,” she says, but her face freezes when she gets a good look at you. Something about her is so different from the ferryman that it takes you a moment to place it, but once you do it’s obvious. The life pulses through her veins, and the scent of it is delicious. You can practically hear her heartbeat, a steady thump-thump echoing around in your head. The ferryman didn’t even so much as breathe. And now that you think about it, you haven’t, either.

“You don’t belong here.”

“Am I not dead?” you ask.

“You are, but you aren’t,” the woman says, and then she snorts softly. It seems undignified, but it almost suits her. “That really made things crystal clear, huh?”

“No, it didn’t. I’m not sure that could have made any opaque surface more transparent, and it certainly made no part of this situation more understandable,” you say.

“Let me start at the beginning, then. I am Rose, the Queen of the underworld. The dead live here, and the living walk above the ground. But you are somehow both, so you can choose where to reside. Will you stay here?” Rose asked, gesturing behind her to the continuing pathway. At her gesture, the fog you hadn’t even noticed before dissipated to reveal a large, firelit city behind a massive wall in the distance. “Or will you return from where you came?”

You glance down at your hands. They are still glowing. “I don’t imagine this will ever stop, will it? The luminescence.”

Rose takes you by the hand, and hers is impossibly warm. You can feel the pulse in her wrist under your fingertips. You wonder how someone so obviously alive can live among the dead. “No, but you can learn to control it,” she says. “I know someone very like you who can teach you how.”

You think of your life above ground, all leading up to this point -- the strife, the terror -- and you can’t imagine living in the world above when you know there is another down below the ground. You feel the steady pump of blood under Rose’s skin, and you make your decision.

“I think I will stay,” you say, finally, and a smile spreads across Rose’s face. She leads you to the gate of the city, never letting go of your hand.


End file.
